Actress Julie Walters has said winning Baftas and being nominated for Oscars could not compare to the honour of being made a dame.
The Billy Elliot star, 67, was named Dame Commander of the British Empire by the Queen in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
The honour came almost 35 years after her breakthrough role in Educating Rita, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.
She said: “It’s fantastic, it’s not really real.
“It was slightly nerve-wracking, ‘when do I curtsey?’ But everyone is the same.
“It’s one of those things where you feel relieved (when you’ve done it), then you look back and think ‘how fabulous’.
“I thought ‘I wish my parents were here’.
“It was so numbing. The Queen said ‘It’s so marvellous that you’ve got this, I’m so pleased’ and ‘How long have you been doing acting?’ “I said ‘43 years’ and she said ‘In so many different things, well done’.”
Asked if she thinks the Queen knows her filmography, which includes Billy Elliot, for which she was nominated for an Oscar, Mamma Mia!, Calendar Girls and seven of the eight Harry Potter films, Dame Julie said: “I shouldn’t think so, I have no idea and no way of knowing. Charles might.”
She added she had been given special dispensation for a day off from shooting the Mamma Mia! sequel, which also stars Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Cher and Amanda Seyfried, to go to the palace. She said: “I’m working at the moment, we’re filming Mamma Mia! We were in Croatia but we are back at Shepperton now, a bit of a comedown after Croatia, so I’m not going to go back to work today but I’ve got to get stuff to go back but we are going to have something to eat and that’s it.”
Helen McCrory, who played Cherie Blair in the 2006 film The Queen about Princess Diana’s death, posed with her husband, Damian Lewis, after receiving her OBE Meanwhile, Squadron Leader George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, 95, the last surviving British member of the Dambusters raid, was given an MBE, 74 years after he took part in the daring mission by a Lancaster squadron over Germany.
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